Talk:Villainous Empowerment
Ok, So I picked up this game recently coming from Magic. Villainous Empowerment in a MtG game would only effect cards in play as it's currently written, because cards in your discard pile, banished zone, deck, or hand are considered to be "cards," not "drills," "setups," "personalities," etc., but "drill cards," setup cards," or "personality cards." When they are in play or on the stack they are considered to be the card type that is printed on them. This allows for interactions to make sense on a deeper level. Example: Goku: Super Saiyan. Power: Search your life deck, discard pile, and banished zone for a total of 5 drills and place them into play. In Magic this would be worded very specifically "Drill Cards." This means that cards like Villainous Empowerment have no effect on these Drill Cards in other zones only the ones in play. If you can now understand my point of view, let's have an interesting discussion on Villainous Empowerment. This card makes it so Setups and Drills can not "be used." It doesn't say they have to be in play or in any other zone for that matter. So all drills and setups in all zones can't be used, does that mean that - if there was a drill or setup with a power from your discard pile to be used as an action - you couldn't use it? How about Black Declaration's discarded from hand effect, can that still be placed into play? Can Setups or Drills with continuous effects or constant powers (not sure the correct terminoloy), like Black Mischeivous Drill, Black Erasing Drill, or Black Targeting Drill be triggered? And lastly, what about drills and setups that aren't in play yet? This is the main question of this thread for me. It's why I started with my background on Cards vs Card type in play. Is the drill or setup found from Empowerment unable to be used? How about the 5 drills from Goku: Super Saiyan? These are deep questions rooted on the mechanics of the game that I think needs to be ironed out somewhere in the rules. MtG does a great job with these sorts of things and upates rules and cards to make them make more sense and more powerful or less powerful depending on the card's intent. As this card is an Ultra Rare, I have no idea how powerful Panini intended the card to be. I was the one who posted questions about Blue Head Knock, Black Evasion, and Saiyan Energy Focus. So I have many more complex questions about the mechanics of this game, but this one so far has been the most challenging for me to understand because of my background in Magic. DB Response ---- In the context of DBZ "using" relates to using what I am going to call the "main effects" of a card. Those effects do not include parenthetical text which in Z are used to indicate special effects that are not considered playing or using the card. Using Black Declaration as an example, the main effect is the ability to shuffle an opponent's DB/Ally/Setup/Drill in play into their Life Deck. The parenthetical text is not "used" per se, but is just an additional part of the cards abilities/interactions that lie outside of use/play. With that said, Villainous Empowerment only prevents the opponent from using the main effect of a card. So any Drill/Setup that has parenthetical text that can be activated is not effected by the use of Villainous Empowerment. So you can still discard Black Declaration with Black Devious Mastery, and the card will still be placed into play via it's parenthetical text. CONSTANT effects are, generally speaking, part of the main effect of a Drill/Setup. I consider these cards "constantly in use" myself. Based on the wording on Villainous Empowerment, and I believe this to be the majority opinion/ruling, those Drills main effects are no longer in effect. As an example, a card like Orange Hiding Drill, would no longer have an effect after a copy of Villainous Empowerment is used. The duration of the effect is for combat, which implies that all future cards that are come into play via any mechanic are also a target of Villainous Empowerment. So if my opponent plays Black Declaration via his Mastery, it is still impacted by the card. In Old Z, there used be a thing called a "floating effect." The effect that prevents the use of Drills/Setups would be considered "floating" until the end of combat when it would resolve as per the timing on the card. In terms more closely related to this game, you could consider that part of the card to create a CONSTANT effect that "floats." The card creating a floating effect is discarded normally and does not stay in play until the end of combat, this is the result of the creation of the floating effect which resolves the effect on the card and triggers discarding the card. There are not any main effects which are on Drills/Setups that are activated in the discard pile at this time, and generally speaking, these effects are always found in parenthetical text. However, if a card were to be made that's main effect was activated from the discard pile, given the wording on the card I would say that they would also be effected by the card. Now, I can't say this is official, and it is definitely a question I will send to Panini, but I believe the above is how most would interpret the situation. I am hoping that James will chime in for another opinion in the mean time. Hope that helps! DerekBuhr (talk) 23:31, May 2, 2015 (UTC) James Response First, a word of caution. I play Magic, and it's a great game (although I prefer DBZ, naturally), but the fact that it is a card game is basically its only similarity to DBZ. It is very dangerous to attempt to validate a DBZ ruling because of a precedence in Magic, and if you do so you are as likely to be wrong as you are to be correct. To "use" a card is simply to activate the powers/effects of a card in play. Some cards, e.g. Physical/Energy Combat cards that attack/block, are used immediately after they are played. Others, e.g. Setups/Drills, are played first and used later (or constantly used in the case of constant effects). If a card like Villainous Empowerment prevents a player from using a certain card type, it does not stop that card from being played. Additionally, the scope is not limited to only cards in play. think of it like "Players may not use setups" instead of "All setups in play cannot be used". I think Derek's reference to "main effects" can be confusing. As far as I can tell, this is just a way to explain how Black Declaration interacts with Villainous Empowerment, but the answer is much simpler. Black Declaration has an effect in parethesis that triggers if it is discarded from your hand during combat. After a Villainous Empowerment, you still get to place Black Declaration into play if you discard it to Black Mastery because you are not using Black Declaration, you are using Black Mastery (remember, "use" is to activate a card that is in play). To answer your questions explicitly, Setups and Drills cannot be used (whether CONSTANT Powers or regular Powers) for the remainder of combat, even if the card was played after Villainous Empowerment was used. 18:53, May 6, 2015 (UTC)